09/15/2007
We wrestled hard yesterday in both practices, but today we
were only on the mat once. Tomorrow we’ll get in a few intra-squad matches. This
afternoon the girls who could risk injury on the side of the mountain went rock
climbing. The World Team members and a few others went on a marathon hike
through the mountains. It was supposed to be just a long hour and a half hike,
but the girls I hang with easily turned it into a three-hour tour. We saw some
dogs and cats that we all had to pet, a blind snake we had to investigate, some
goats we had to feed, and some cows with loud bells. We heard the bells first,
and proceeded on a cow hunt. We found them enjoying their peaceful lunch, until
we went over to pet and feed and generally harass them. On one of the first overlooks, an Austrian wrestler with us pointed out the Rhine River in the distance and told us that the mountains on the other side were in Switzerland. We hiked up a steep grassy hill, and our wrestler-guide told us little kids trained on it for skiing. We passed all kinds of beautiful homes on picturesque hillsides. At the highest point of our trail, our wrestler explained that in the winter, we could ride a sled all the way back down into town. I’d guess it would be about a two-mile sled ride! Coming off of a good hard day of wrestling, it was great to get outside for our afternoon workout. It was a way to recharge and to clear my mind before matches tomorrow.
For the most part, we have a pretty compatible group of women and coaches on this trip. That means that we can bring our team environment anywhere we train. We can push each other on the mat, and generally get along with one another off of the mat. This team also has a certain dynamic between the team members. We’ve come to expect certain things from each of our teammates. Today was no different. Toward the end of our hike, we were all getting a little tired, and we came up on a little man-made basin of water and a bench to cool off and relax a bit. The trail is pretty narrow, so we all followed one another in ones and twos. Marcie Van Dusen leaned over the basin of water and stuck her fingers in as Mary Kelly came up on it. Marcie says, “Oh, there are little fish. Mary, come and see!” Mary walked right up to the basin and leaned in to look just in time for Marcie to scoop a handful of water into her face. Classic! The final mountain creature to add to our list turned out to be the mythical and elusive basin-fish.
Wednesday, Sept. 12
So we’ve arrived in Gotzis, Austria where we’ll train for a week. It was a little sobering to realize that we traveled on September 11th, although we started on the 10th. Our long day of traveling amounted to something close to a modern day miracle. No one forgot their passports; no one’s bags were far over weight; none of our flights were delayed, and all of our baggage arrived when we did. I have no tragic tales to tell about our journey to get here.
Early in the day, Kristie Marano did try to give her training partner, Steph Lee, a hard time about carrying around a stuffed bear. Then Coach Terry Steiner reminded Kristie that you don’t have much room to talk about teddy bears if you usually travel with a Spongebob Squarepants pillow. Touche!
Gotzis is a small village with quaint cottages and shops, but there are enough of them all together that you could call the place a city. It’s near the foothills of the Alps, not far from the Swiss border. In short, the city is everything you’d expect from Heidi and The Sound of Music all rolled into one place. There are mountain views, babbling brooks, with ivy and flowers everywhere. Under the street signs between our hotel and the gym are signs with a picture of two wrestlers and the words ‘wrestling room west.’ It’s my kind of place!
Everything in the hotel and the wrestling facility looks like it came straight from an Ikea catalogue. We’ve only had two workouts so far. This morning, we rolled around and drilled enough to shake off the plane and bus rides. This afternoon, we played a game and got some individual work done, and ended with some sauna time. No one feels the best during the first workout after a long trip, but overall I’d say everyone is feeling pretty good. We’ll get down to wrestling hard again by tomorrow.
Now that we’re all here, and in our last push before the World Championships, I want to take this time to acknowledge how much it takes to get us all here. For the last few months, I’ve thought about wrestling non-stop, and every moment of my time was planned around what my wrestling required of me mentally and physically. Now that we’re here with nothing to do in the afternoon, I realize how fortunate we are to do what we’re doing.
We send a full team of women, freestyle guys, and Greco-Roman wrestlers, along with training partners for each person on the team, a trainer, refs, team leaders, a sports psychologist, and a slew of coaches. This means that someone had to work hard to get gear for us all, and someone else had to make all of the travel arrangements for all of these people coming from all over the country. Ever since we determined our World Team, we’ve had several coaches in to work with us. When you’re used to having one or two coaches all year, having several of them intensely focusing only on you, it can be intimidating at first. I began to realize that together, I have all of the tools I need to be successful next week on the World stage.
I had one coach constantly building me up and giving me positive thoughts. One coach gave me all of the technical and strategic information I could use. Another coach pushed me to dominate more, to push myself harder, to find a way to score. And one coach was there when I was tired and helped me ignore my fatigue and to refocus only on what I had to do to score.
Then there are the training partners. It’s tough to be the No. 2 or No. 3 girl in the room. I’ve been there too often myself. You have to deal with the disappointment of being just short of your goal, and also train as intensely as everyone going to Worlds. I want to thank all of the girls from 63 to 72 kilos that helped me in my practices. My training partner, Randi Miller, got to endure me stuffing, pushing, pulling, and snapping her head down about a million times in the last few months. I appreciate the tough job the training partners have, but as they go through the process of the World Championships with us, they are also given an opportunity to get ready for when it’s their shot.
Finally, we each have our own support system that helps keep us sane, and who still love us even when we do get a little crazy. My family and my hometown are my cheering section. They have loved me enough that no matter where I go, I can still feel them with me. Many of my closest friends are either here, or were with me during training. Just recently my support system got a huge boost when my fiancée, Joe Cygan, moved from Lake Placid to Colorado. He helps me stay strong and makes me better.
Monday, Sept. 10
Most of the female World Team members and our training partners live at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. We have one more practice this morning before we take off for our trip to the World Championships. We’ll drive up to Denver, fly over to Minneapolis, then Amsterdam, then Zurich, then drive to a training facility in Austria. We’ll train there for a little less than a week to let our bodies recover from traveling and acclimate to the new time. Then we’ll travel to Baku in time for the first weight classes to get ready for weigh-ins. I weigh-in the last day, so my time in Azerbaijan is about pacing myself.
Our summer has been a busy one. It began at World Team Trials, then the No. 1 women at the Olympics weights competed at Pan-Ams in Brazil, then women at the non-Olympic weight classes had a special wrestle-off to determine the true No. 1s, then finally the entire World Team traveled to compete at the Warsaw Cup. Our World Championship preparations included lots of travel and competition, intense training, lots of sweat, some team bonding, and a little bit of drama. These are all of the things that go into a team of women getting ready to take on the World.
Today will be a really long day once the traveling starts, but this group has done its share of international navigation. I don’t expect that anyone will get too stressed out by the inevitable complications that will arise. We are a group of teammates that believe in one another and are excited for our shot at a World title. Many of us are also good friends, so our trip will surely bring about some incredible wrestling as well as some good laughs.
I already know that Sally Roberts is going to be my roommate when we get overseas. We’ve roomed together before, so I know that although we probably won’t have any TV stations in English, I will still get the Sally Channel 24-7. She is, at any moment, liable to break out in song and/or dance. She is also capable of wandering off into her own little world for a while as she makes her belly button also sing and/or dance. Anyone who knows Sally has surely seen a Sally show before.
Thanks to my coaches and teammates, I am well-prepared, so I am ready to get down to business at Worlds. I also love many of my teammates, so I also look forward to sharing this experience with them.